The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Chapter XXXII

  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

  Joan Lundberg sat in a half-trance in the bitter cold of the ladies’ room as the afternoon light filtering darkly through the drifted windows dimmed. Five minutes more, she told herself dazedly, and then I’ll go to Mona’s compartment for my coat. And then five minutes more. And then five minutes more.

  The pullman maid put her head in to announce about the toilets… ladies on the right and genmun on the left. A woman cackled that she never heard of such a thing and that she wouldn’t dream of it. Another woman asked testily whether she thought she was Queen Victoria.

  Joan sat through it dazedly.

  A kind lady finally asked her if she didn’t have a coat.

  “Yes,” Joan said, “I have a coat,” and the woman went away.

  The cackling woman came back at last, furtively, and ducked into one of the booths, very lady-like.

  The place became intolerable and Joan got up and went to Mona’s compartment and knocked.

  Mona Greer opened the door, tall and sleek in her dark mink. There were no reproaches or questions; just a warm acceptance of her return. “How was the girl, little one?” Mona asked.

  “Girl?”

  “The one with the baby.”

  “Oh. I saw her for a couple of minutes. She’s having a hard time. A terribly hard time.” Wildly: “What the hell did she expect?”

  Mona laughed warmly. “You’re learning,” she said approvingly.

  “Give me a drink, please. I’m freezing.” She found her coat and belted it around her, breathing steam into the air. The cognac burned her throat gratifyingly.

  “Mr. Foreman popped in for a few minutes,” Mona said carefully, “to lecture me on my evil ways. But he’ll be back like a lamb soon for cocktails. Getting dark, isn’t it? Soon there won’t be anything to do except go to bed.”

  “I don’t mind. Mona, must we have those men in? It would be ridiculous. Charging around in the dark, spilling drinks …”

  “It should be amusing, darling. We won’t be ridiculous.” Joan laughed a little hysterically. She was right of course; as always, she was right. It would be amusing, and there was damn-all in life except amusement, at least life as Mona Greer lived it.

  Boyce felt a call of nature and thought: Oh, damn! He got up from the warmish nest he had made in the seat with a blanket and his overcoat and stumped down the aisle. Women on the right, men on the left. The stench from the green-curtained men’s room was sickening. Somebody had not been cooperative. He was very glad he didn’t have a seat near the vestibule.

  He opened the train door and clinging cautiously to the grabirons, went down the three steps of the wooden box-ladder planted in the snow. The cold grabbed him and squeezed his chest: a dry, ringing cold that you didn’t notice for a second and then noticed all too well.

  This was the drifted-in side of the train. With shovels somebody had scooped a kind of cave, open to the leaden sky. The other side of the train the snow wouldn’t be more than a foot or so deep… good break for the ladies. But that of course was why they’d done it that way. He was glad there was nobody else out. Hastily he relieved himself, arranged his clothes and scurried up the steps. He had forgotten to put his gloves back on and the grabirons burned his palms.

  Shame-faced, he scurried down the aisle to his seat, and found it occupied by two fattish, determined, scowling women. “That’s my seat,” he said politely. “See? There’s my baggage …”

  “We were wondering,” one of the women said, “if you’d be so kind as to change places with us. We’re in three and five, and the… odor …”

  He stood bewildered.

  A woman across the aisle leaned over and said: “Don’t do it, mister. Queen Victoria there is the one that made the odor, all by herself. I saw her sneak in after I tried to talk sense to her. She’s a lady, she is.”

  “Oh, what a lie!” the woman by the window whooped. “How dare you …” And then she began to cry and said: “Come on, Milly.” Drably they trailed back to seats by the ladies’ room.

  Boyce said to the woman: “Well, thanks,” and began to settle himself. And then got thirsty. He went down the aisle to the little fountain and of course it didn’t work.

  A man passing stopped and watched him contemptuously for a moment as he pressed the handle and then tried to twist it. “It’s frozen, Jack,” he said. “If you want water you go out, gets some snow and thaw it with your hands. That’s all I been doing for two hours for my little girl. I don’t know where she puts it.”

  “Thanks,” Boyce said. The hell with the water anyway. It was getting darker. Soon he’d be able to cash in on the invitation to cocktails. He didn’t want the liquor especially. He did want very much to see Joan even in his role of a bumbling male showed up and made ridiculous by Mona Greer, damn her.

  * * * *

  Foreman sat in the half-dark of his compartment with the blanket huddled around him. There was a rap on his door.

  “Come in.”

  It was Groves, the doctor-preacher. He had Foreman’s storm coat over his arm. “I want to thank you,” he said hesitantly.

  “Oh. What happened?”

  “She died, Mr. Foreman. In a state of grace, I hope. Do you mind if I sit down for a moment?” He slumped onto the other end of the berth and dropped the coat between them.

  “I’m sorry,” Foreman said inadequately. “What about the baby?”

  “It was touch-and-go for half an hour. And then he died. About a month premature. In a hospital I’d have popped him into an incubator but—” He fell wearily silent.

  Foreman had to know. “I heard,” he said, “that a young man got hurt.” He licked his lips.

  The doctor looked at him dryly. “My wife first-aided him. I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that he’s resting well and that he suffered no fractures when he fell and hit his head. I gather it was his own carelessness that caused him to fall and hit his head.”

  “Yes,” said Foreman, relieved. He held up the coat to what light filtered through the window. It was clean. He slipped it on gratefully and buttoned and buckled it from chin to the hem.

  “Mr. Foreman,” Groves said, stirring with an effort from his fatigue.

  “Yes, doctor?”

  “I don’t think you should say anything to anybody about Mrs. Mackenzie and the baby. There would be no point spreading alarm and despondency.”

  “I won’t. You don’t have to go, doctor. You seem to be dog-tired.” Groves was getting up.

  “Yes I do have to go. Silly woman went out in baby-doll pumps—so my wife tells me they’re called—and dawdled over her business. Three frostbitten toes on one foot, two on the other. Her brilliant husband rubbed them with snow. Naturally blood-vessels were ruptured. If she’s lucky there will be no gangrene. Of course she was a diabetic, too, and should have known better …”

  The doctor wandered from the compartment, passing his hand wearily over his face.

  A good man, thought Foreman, who couldn’t set things right because of an accident of wind and weather. How could he in his corruption set a thing right? He felt the switch-blade knife in his pocket, hard and cold as his hate.

  Chapter XXXIII

  NIGHTFALL

  Newscast:

  “The thoughts and prayers of the nation tonight are with the passengers and crew of the snowbound crack streamliner Golden Gate Express.

  “High in Raton Pass of the Rocky Mountains the ultra-modern diesel-electric train is stranded, a helpless victim of nature on a rampage. Temperatures of fifty to sixty degrees below zero prevail in the area.

  “Sustained by packages of food and medicine that Air Force planes have dropped, every soul aboard must be waiting tensely as night closes in on the Rockies for the roar of snowplows which are working their way toward the train …”


  * * * *

  The old gentleman in Drawing Room C said dreamily: “Zinnias, foxgloves and delphiniums.” He was sitting up after a little nap and he sat up a trifle faster than he should have. A patch of his aorta the size of a fifty-cent piece blew out. He looked astonished as blood pumped into his chest cavity; for a moment there was considerable pain as the blood pressed against organs which had never been pressed before. The pain passed instantly, for the blood in his chest was blood that did not reach his brain. In swift succession the switches up there went open. Sight went, hearing went, kinaesthesia, the “muscle sense,” went. He no longer felt alive and when his lungs and heart stopped he no longer was alive. Peristalsis continued in his bowels for a little while.

  “Harvey?” asked his wife. “Aren’t you well? Let me fix your pillow.” She fixed his pillow. “The cold is dreadful,” she said. “One would expect more consideration.” She looked narrowly at her husband. No, she thought. He’s had spells before. It can’t be. Because it mustn’t be, it can’t be. “Perhaps the trip was a mistake,” she said gaily. “When you’ve seen one great-grandchild you’ve seen them all. I’d far rather have spent the winter gardening even if California gardens never did seem quite real to me.” He couldn’t be—gone. It was not merely unlikely, it was impossible. He was wisely resting, that must be it, resting and conserving his strength. She noted that his trousers were wet and she almost tutted in vexation. Naturally she would not mention such a thing, but as she chatted with Harvey she was also planning about this unfortunate new development. Really, it sometimes seemed old folks were never let off anything; now there was this business of—incontinence. She would have to persuade Harvey to wear a rubber device. You strapped them to your leg. And Harvey would pipe, when she delicately broached the subject, “Really unnecessary, my dear. Nothing the matter with me.”

  “Nothing the matter with you,” she said to Harvey, “except false pride. I’ve had sixty years of it, starting with poor little Abbey when she got in trouble. She always was a little fool but she wouldn’t have taken Lysol without that big thundering denunciation from you. For pity’s sake, Harvey, she was my sister and all she wanted was a couple of hundred dollars so she could crawl away somewhere and have her baby. Do you feel like denouncing somebody now, Harvey? Why don’t you?”

  She began to cry. “It’s over,” she said. “It’s over, and God forgive me, I’m so glad.”

  * * * *

  Mrs. Groves was doing the grim tidying-up that has to be done after a death. Two deaths… The little conductor, no longer peppery, was writing out a report in the compartment with her. The girl had gone into delirium, remembered she was a believer or had been once, and taken Dr. Groves for a priest. The theology of it confused Mrs. Groves. Her husband had no power of absolution, so the girl, according to her lights, was now either in Hell or Purgatory. However, there was a recognized lay baptism, so the faithful would say the infant was now in Heaven instead of Limbo, which was probably just as well. Limbo was inhabited by unbaptized babies and such distinguished pagans as Aristotle and Averrhoes. They couldn’t have much to say to each other. But could a follower of the heretical Luther administer a valid lay baptism, she wondered? And there was some sin they had called “exposing the sacrament to nullity.” Perhaps Dr. Groves had done that and thereby damned himself. On the other hand there was the possibility under their own beliefs that he was already damned, not being one of the Elect. At this she snorted defiance to John Calvin; if theology stated that such a man as her husband could be eternally damned for no fault of his own, so much the worse for theology.

  Somebody rapped respectfully on the door; the conductor put down his report and opened it. “Hello, Cutshaw,” he said. It was a porter, a big man in a plaid overcoat.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Simms,” he said hesitantly. “I heard—I couldn’t hardly believe it—”

  The nurse drew back the sheet and Cutshaw looked at the small body. “Tan-color, all right,” the porter said softly. “Poor little feller. Maybe better this way. Scuse me for disturbing you, miss.” He slipped out quietly and the conductor locked the door and resumed working on the report.

  “She still open?” he asked the nurse.

  “No. After the infant died Dr. Groves sutured her.”

  “Then I guess that’s all,” he said. “You finished?”

  “Yes.” They went out and the conductor locked up from the outside. “First time on a train of mine with a mother and child both,” he said. “Usually one or the other pulls through, if not both. But—considering—maybe Cutshaw was right.”

  * * * *

  Officer Candidate Milton F. Martinson lay in a commandeered drawing room in the dark. It was a couple of hours since the tired-faced doctor had treated him, dressing his frozen toes and face. They blazed with pain. He should have remembered. Cold Weather Survival: “Below the freezing point every additional mile per hour of wind is physiologically equal to one degree lower temperature …” Perhaps it had been twenty below and the wind had been blowing forty, equals sixty below. That was the way they froze meat, in big blast tunnels at zero degrees with a hundred-mile gale forced through them, equals a hundred below. He tried to grimace but choked with pain from his frozen face. Frozen meat.

  They’d take off his toes, perhaps. It would be a great relief, both to end the pain and—the competition. From then on he’d be a cripple. His mother wouldn’t nag him ever again to go out and play like the other kids; he’d be a cripple. He’d get a discharge, maybe the Soldier’s Medal for risking his life in a civilian emergency. A limp and a little strip of enameled metal to wear in his lapel—people would come to certain conclusions and he wouldn’t stop them.

  No more competing, no more O.C.S., morning pushups, rope traverse, wall scaling that left him racked and gasping for an hour to the astonishment of the other candidates. Sleep as late as you want, get a little clerking job somewhere, read, watch television. Be the Man Who Has Had It…

  Good-bye to O.C.S., thought the Man Who Had It. Sand tables, the school solution, Rifle Squad in the Attack, .75 mm. Recoilless Rifle Defensive Positions, Voice of Command, Company Administration, the Morning Report is the daily history of the company, your mortar section is cut off in this position with three days of fire your forward observer reports an enemy platoon with automatic weapons approaching from the north your ground phone line to Company has been cut you have an S.C.R. 400 but Battalion does not respond Mr. Martinson what do you do?

  You yawn. Good-bye to all that.

  In spite of the pain, he fell asleep comfortably out of the running for the first time in eighteen years.

  * * * *

  George had a hangover and Harold had a minor concussion. They sat side by side in the gathering dark of the day coach. It was noisy; a child was crying with the cold, two women were bickering loudly about a blanket and an old man was complaining to his grown and bad-tempered son.

  “Dumb fool,” George said, “letting him kick you that way. Should of grabbed his foot and stabbed him.”

  Harold held his head tenderly and shook it. “You’re the dumb fool, George. Guy did me a favor, way I look at it. What if I’d of stabbed him, then what? He saved me from the Stebbins Temper, that’s what he did. All us Stebbinses flare up and then we’re sorry afterwards. Got an uncle in Stoney Hill Prison and he’s never getting out unless he gets a pardon. He worked on the Road Force twenty years and then he got too feeble so they just stuck him in a cell. For what? The Stebbins Temper. He stabbed a man, no reason except his temper. Don’t like to say it, George, but you’re mistaken.”

  George digested it for a few minutes. “Maybe I spoke hastily,” he said. And then after another pause: “Figure we’ll get out of here all right?”

  “We got out of worse places all right.”

  “God, yes… I’ve been thinking. I kind of wish I had a Bible now. Wish it was light enough to read it a little.”


  “I know lots of verses. From Sunday School. Won some prizes, matter of fact.”

  “No! You remember any?”

  “Well, lemme see. There’s: Take all that thou hast and give to the poor.” He fell silent.

  After a while George said: “Funny you should bring up that one. Think maybe we ought to do just that?”

  It happened that they were reclining in moderate comfort despite the cold. From the plump traveling bags in the rack above their heads they had pulled out all manner of clothing, knitted skull caps and sheeplined Korea hats with ear flaps. Harold said evasively: “Hell, we’re not rich. We just go to school.”

  George listened for a moment to the crying child and said miserably: “No use. You saying that verse was a Sign, Harold. We gotta do what’s right.”

  Harold swore a little and then got up clumsily, shedding blanket and overcoat. He heaved down the suitcases, and emptied them. They were still grumbling when they stumbled down the dark aisle passing out the clothes where they seemed most needed.

  They finally got to sleep, shivering, wrapped in a single blanket and with their feet and legs shoved into their suitcases.

  * * * *

  Cor chase my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree if he hasn’t gone to sleep, thought the lieutenant’s wife incredulously. Sleep! We’re stuck on a snowbound train, it’s unspeakably cold, we’re just a little hungry, between my fur coat and the blankets we’re just a little chilly—and he can sleep. Maybe it’s something they learn at The Point. Spanish, Arabic, Civil Engineering and How to Fall Asleep Anywhere.

  And he didn’t even—well, I was a little snappish with him. I’ll make it up to him in San Francisco. I’ll be very sweet and tender and tears will tremble in my eyes when I see him off but they won’t spill over so he can tell his new friends at the Officer’s Club out there how swell I was, real Army all the way.